


From There On You Might Just Grow

by ArtsyAfrodite



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Brothers, Gallavich, Gen, Milkovich Siblings, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:01:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1574603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyAfrodite/pseuds/ArtsyAfrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But at the end of the day, he was still his brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From There On You Might Just Grow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lonelygallavich_addict](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelygallavich_addict/gifts).



Most days having a smoke was just that, a smoke.  But today – it was a fucking therapy session.

He gripped the cigarette that rested between his index and middle finger hard.  He brought the nicotine to his pursed lips and sucked the smoke even harder.  His chest expanded, the clouds now wrapping around his lungs almost painful.  If he was hung over when he came home, he certainly was knocked sober now.  How and why he hadn’t known this shit was a mystery to him, the fact that he fully didn’t know the one person he was certain he knew inside and out really toying with his emotions.  Apparently, he only had the _out_ part down pat.  Or maybe it was the other way around.  _Way to go asshole._

The front door opened, footsteps too light to be the person he was hoping for approaching him from behind.  “You still out here?” Mandy asked Iggy as he sat on the top step of the porch, puffing away.

“Yup,” he replied dryly.  He heard a sigh escape his sister’s mouth, the mood he was just now managing to dismiss resurfacing.

“Dammit Iggy stop making this a big fucking deal.  He’s already dealt with so – “

“What part of I need a fuckin’ minute did you _not_ understand?” Iggy snapped, cutting her off.  He should have said that quickly, except his delivery was slow, deliberate.  He didn’t want to be bothered.  He crooked his neck at an awkward angle to catch a glimpse of Mandy in time enough to see her scowl.  His chin rested on his shoulder as he watched her cross her arms.

“It’s been an hour asshole.” 

“Then leave me alone for two more.”

“You’re not gonna sit out here for two more hours Iggy,” Mandy continued to press.  Iggy turned his head so he was facing the street again.

“Maybe,” he said through a cloud of smoke.  “Not your fuckin’ business if I do.”

“Whatever.”  Mandy uncrossed her arms and bent forward, shoving the back of her brother’s head.  Whenever her words didn’t get across to any of her siblings, she always resorted to violence, or the ‘Milkovich way’ of handling things.  Iggy jumped to his feet, the sudden force catching him off guard.  He turned around and faced Mandy, grabbing the cigarette that hung loosely on his lips.  He squinted his eyes, the diminished view of his sister as she frowned not helping his mood.

“Yo, keep your fuckin’ hands to yourself,” Iggy warned.

“Or what?  You gonna flip out on me too?”  Mandy laughed as she figuratively rubbed her brother’s inability to deal with anything remotely out of the ordinary in his face.  “Ya know – you do live here, so you have to come back in sometime.”

“Don’t gotta do shit.”

“Suit yourself, but Mickey bolted a half hour ago,” Mandy began as she stepped inside.  She turned, scanning her eyes over Iggy in disgust in a way only she could.  “So you can stop being such a pussy now and bring your ass in the house.  Your brother nearly gets killed and all you can focus on is the fact that he’s gay?  Lame.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about,” Iggy defended himself.  “That’s not it.”  He paused, Mandy’s eyes nothing short of telling him silently he was full of shit.  “I mean, it’s not just that.”  And although his discovery of his brother’s sexual orientation was the biggest part of his mini meltdown, it was also the fact that his little brother felt it necessary to lie to his face.  He wasn’t Terry.  He wasn’t – although he was beginning to feel like he was.

“He doesn’t know that.  And quite frankly I’m not convinced it’s anything but.”  Mandy slammed the door, the bang clashing with his rude awakening and ricocheting inside his head.

This wasn’t his fault.  He couldn’t help his reaction when he saw the last thing he thought would ever take place underneath a Milkovich roof. 

 

_Iggy stumbled through the back door, his hangover pounding away behind his eyes.  Everything was out of focus._

_“Fuck,” he mumbled softly as he checked his watch.  4:15pm. He’d passed out at a friend’s house around 6:00am after a night of hard partying.  He woke up on the living room floor with some chick’s leg across his face._

_He closed his eyes, massaging his eyelids with the pads of his fingers.  He cringed as nausea crept into his throat, saliva suddenly springing in his dry mouth.   A night of drinking and doing coke never panned out well for him the next day.  He was still more than a little fucked up.  The sound of a crying baby trailed out of the living room, the screech making his head practically split.  Svetlana came into focus, walking slowly as she rocked Yevgeny in her arms.  She titled her head to the side as she studied Iggy’s screwed up face._

_“You’re hung over,” she said as she sat at the kitchen table._

_“No shit,” Iggy replied, his eyes closing at the sound of his nephew’s screams.  “Can’t you shut him up?”_

_“He needs meds for his cold that his piece of shit father won’t go buy.  He gets slapped around a bit by daddy and shuts himself in room all day.”  Iggy opened his eyes, his eyebrows knitting together as he looked at Svetlana._

_“That shit ain’t nothin’ new.”  Iggy stood, making his way towards Mickey’s bedroom.  “Speaking of the shrimp, I need him to tell me how to make that remedy shit with the egg and tobasco.”_

_“Good luck getting him out.  He may be a bit – busy,” Svetlana said as she disappeared into Terry’s room, now serving as her own._

_Iggy walked slowly to his brother’s room.  The door was cracked slightly, and he was about to push it open, but something caught his ear as he got closer.  Mickey wasn’t alone.  He wasn’t nosey, snooping was something chicks did, but ignoring the feeling to mind his business, he peered through the crack.  His eyes widened as he took in the sight behind the bedroom door._

_There his brother was, lying on his stomach as a tall red headed guy straddled his hips, his hands massaging over every inch of his back and arms.  Mickey was facing the door, his eyes closed while the side of his face pressed into the pillow, a very satisfied smile playing on his lips.  His face was badly bruised, the cuts on his face probably a day old.  Some of the swelling still had yet to go down._

_As Iggy squinted his eyes, the fog in his head from his hang over began to clear.  The guy massaging Mickey’s back tilted his head back and laughed at something he said.  Suddenly, everything clicked with Iggy.  Ian fucking Gallagher.  The same Ian Gallagher his brother wanted to kill three years ago.  And if what he was seeing wasn’t enough, Ian leaned forward and grazed his tongue over Mickey’s earlobe before moving down his neck.  His brother made no protest, parting his lips slightly in obvious pleasure before bringing his left hand up to cup the back of Ian’s neck, bringing him in for a kiss._

_Iggy reacted before he even gave himself a chance to think._

_“What the fuck is this?!” Iggy screamed.  He burst through the bedroom door, the look on his face far too reminiscent of his father’s.  Mickey pushed Ian off of him and nearly flew off the bed, grabbing a pair of sweats and quickly throwing on the first t-shirt he saw.  It was Ian’s.  “You lettin’ him do this shit to you?”_

_Mickey stood in the middle of his room floor, his face nothing short of horrified.  Ian simply smiled, not fazed, as he got dressed slowly.  “Ay, look, just – calm down,” Mickey pleaded._

_“What the hell is this?  And what the fuck happened to your face?”  Iggy’s voice was getting louder, as he moved closer to his brother._

_“Your father nearly killed him,” Ian interjected._

_“Ian, just be quiet, please.  I can handle this.”  Mickey turned back to his brother, the look of rage on his face causing his stomach to turn.  “Look, I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while.”_

_“Tell me what?  That you like dick?” Iggy snapped._

_“No, that he loves dick,” Ian interrupted once again._

_“Jesus, fuck!  Ian shut up!” Mickey lashed out at his boyfriend._

_Iggy suddenly rushed at his brother, hemming him up by the collar of his shirt.  Ian was about to leap towards the older Milkovich, but stopped when Mickey threw up his hand.  “But you’re a Milkovich!” Iggy screamed into his younger brother’s face.  “A Milkovich, Milkovich…” his voice trailed off as he repeated their family name multiple times, his eyes wild with an anger that only genetics passed down from Terry himself could produce._

_Iggy loosened the grip on Mickey’s shirt before turning around and storming out of the room.  Mandy must have heard the commotion as she emerged from her room, her eyes confused.  Iggy bolted out of the front door, the sound of shit hitting the outside walls resonating inside as he kicked over whatever was in his way on the porch.  Metal clanged and glass shattered.  If none of them saw him go out, the sounds would have been mistaken for Terry, who was also in jail.  She didn’t have to ask what happened when Mickey came walking out of his room with Ian on his heels.  He looked at Mandy, his eyes tired and uncertain._

_“He knows,” Mickey said solemnly._

 

Iggy threw down his cigarette, snuffing it out with the tip of his boot.  Mickey was fucking gay, and how he still had breath in his body after Terry found out was more than a mystery to him – it was otherworldly.  It was also worrisome; the thought of what his father would do when he got out was something he cared not to even fathom.  If Mickey knew what was good for him (and his red headed lover), he’d get the fuck out of dodge the first chance he got.  Tension crept in the back of his neck at the thought.  He needed to get away from the house for a while, to clear the jumbled mess that was his head, his legs taking him to the only place that could allow him such a thing.

~~~

“Thought you’d end up here.”

Iggy stopped dead in his tracks, scratching aimlessly at the back of his head as he looked at his brother perched atop a crate.  He didn’t answer Mickey right away, only letting his eyes silently acknowledge his presence before they darted nervously to the side.  Mickey took a drag on his cigarette, a small smile spreading across his face as he studied the way his older brother uneasily shoved his hands in his pocket.  He was embarrassed for the way he acted earlier.

“You gonna just stand here like a confused little girl all day?” Mickey said teasingly as he squinted at his older brother.

Iggy slowly walked across the rooftop of the abandoned warehouse towards Mickey, looking behind and around him as if making sure no one was around.  He looked down at him once he was close, hovering above him as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other.  He bothered his bottom lip with his teeth before letting out a long breath.  “Got another one of those?”

Mickey reached inside his pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and handed Iggy one.  He tossed the lighter up at him, nearly hitting him in the face as he was once again glancing around.  “He ain’t here,” Mickey said as he looked up.

“Who?” Iggy asked confused.

“Ian,” Mickey started as he stood.  He made his way to an old, tattered couch he and his brothers found on a curb a few years back.  He plopped down, simultaneously sucking on his cigarette.  “As if you weren’t just lookin’ for him.”

Iggy looked up in the air as he rolled his eyes.  Maybe he was looking for Ian without really noticing (or admitting) he was.  “Where is he?” he asked as he finally sat on the opposite end of the couch.

“Home gettin’ some more of his stuff.”

“He movin’ in or somethin’?”  Mickey snorted at the look on Iggy’s face.  It was covered with something between confusion and pure terror.  He always made the funniest faces when he was dealing with things foreign to him. 

“Not really.  More like just stayin’ for a while.”  Mickey glanced at his brother’s face, the look on his own now something too close to nerves, but more along the lines of needing approval.  As he stared intently at Iggy, whose focus was on the graffiti at the far wall across the rooftop, he suddenly felt like a little boy again, ten years old and longing for an endorsement of any kind. 

Iggy finally looked at Mickey – _really_ looked at him.  He studied the bruises on his face and the way his blue eyes desperately searched for support in his hazel ones, and within an instant he was thrown back in time when they were thirteen and fourteen.  They used to escape the wrath of Terry, running to this rooftop, the place they bonded as brothers – their place.  Ian and Mickey weren’t the only two that had a place they called their own.  Mickey and iggy had a getaway too, all cement and grime where they would look at dirty magazines and carve curse words into the walls with their knives.  Occasionally, they were accompanied by their older brothers Jamie and Nicky. 

He remembered when they would throw rocks at cars that passed in the streets below, ducking and dodging the people that jumped out, looking around for the culprits as they shouted profanities into the air.  Iggy smiled at the memory of how hard Mickey would laugh until his face turned beet red, the color slightly masking the black and blue around his eyes, and bluish-purple around his neck.  The swelling around his lips didn’t look as bad when he laughed, and he never seemed to mind when a fresh cut on them re-split, the blood drizzling down his chin.  Mickey always caught it the hardest from Terry, and as Iggy thought harder, he felt so fucked up because it was obvious Terry always saw something in him that was different from the rest of them.  Yes, Mickey was gay.

But at the end of the day, he was still his brother.

“I guess that’s cool,” Iggy finally responded after a pause that made Mickey more than antsy. 

“What?” Mickey said dumbfounded as he quirked an eyebrow.  “A few hours ago you wanted to beat my ass, and all you got to say is, you _guess_ it’s cool?”

Iggy simply shrugged as he took another pull on his cigarette, his nonchalance in true Milkovich fashion.  “To each their own man.”

Mickey stared at him for a few seconds longer, before scratching the top of his head.  He parted his mouth to speak, before snapping it shut as if choosing his words wisely before saying anything.  “You’re creepin’ me the fuck out,” he finally scoffed.  “I came up here ready to pretty much battle it out with you, but you’re actin’…I don’t know…fuckin’ weird.”  Iggy began to laugh hysterically, causing Mickey to shoot up from the couch, standing to his feet.  He braced himself as he stood, watching his brother laugh until his face turned red.

“Battle it out?  With me?” Iggy said through his hysterical laughing.  “Dude, you never could beat me.”

“Whatever,” Mickey responded, still apprehensive.  He still refused to sit, his brother’s sudden outburst of laughter more than unsettling.

Iggy caught a glimpse of Mickey’s unease, and caught his breath as he motioned with his hand for him to take a seat.  “Ay, look man, just sit down will ya?”  After a few seconds of deciding whether or not that was the smart thing to do, Mickey complied and plopped back down on the couch.  After a few more breaths, the laughter lines in Iggy’s face slowly straightened as his expression grew serious.  He tossed his cigarette to the ground before rubbing both of his hands over his face.  He didn’t realize how tired being wound up over this whole thing had made him.  “Look, I’m sorry bro.”

Mickey shifted nervously as he side eyed Iggy.  Milkoviches didn’t apologize and he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t making his stomach curdle and his eyes twitch.  “You apologizin’?”

“Fuckin’ faggy as hell, right?” Iggy responded through a half chuckle, not realizing what he said.  “Oh shit Mickey, I didn’t mean – “

“Shut the fuck up already,” Mickey cut him off.  He snickered at how quickly Iggy pulled back – something he never did.  “Look man, I may like dick, but I ain’t no faggot.”

Both boys looked at each other, brief silence hovering above them as they absorbed the awkward dynamic taking place on the rooftop.  After a few more moments, they simultaneously burst into laughter.  And they laughed hard, the way they did when they were younger.  They continued to laugh, at nothing in particular – or perhaps they were laughing at each other and how crazy they were acting these last few hours.

“I don’t wanna hear that shit man,” Iggy managed to say through his laughter.  Mickey caught his breath, his eyes once again full of the expectation he had as a ten year old boy, as he looked at his older brother.  He face grew more serious, his thumb finding its way to his bottom lip.  He then looked away, focusing his eyes on the rooftop ledge.  His head lowered slightly as his hands fiddled with the zipper at the bottom of his jacket.

“I just couldn’t tell you.”  Mickey finally looked back at Iggy, his eyes almost childlike.  “I just couldn’t.” 

“Hey, Terry is our fuckin’ dad,” Iggy replied as he stood.  That was his way of saying ‘it’s ok’ without actually saying it.  Because then, that would be pushing it.  He then motioned with his head for Mickey to stand and follow him.  He walked towards the wall at the opposite end of the rooftop with the graffiti sprayed across it, Mickey on his heels.  When they approached the wall, Iggy leaned forward, his face less than a foot away from an area beneath the spray painted word “Southside.”  He traced something with his index and middle finger, a small smile spreading across his lips.  “Remember this shit?” he asked as he turned towards Mickey.

Mickey leaned forward, squinting his eyes as he got closer.  He snorted, as what Iggy was referring to came more into focus.  “Yeah, definitely,” he said as the memory began to play in his mind.

“Remember this shit,” Iggy said again.  This time, it wasn’t a question, but a declaration.

“Yeah,” Mickey responded, getting the message – and the promise.  They both continued to look at the words they carved into the cement wall years ago with their pocket knives, the note purposely placed underneath “Southside,” weathered from the time passed, but there nonetheless.  It was permanent.  And it would always be there, standing the test of time, the message bolder than the graffiti above it, as it read:

                _Iggy Milkovich was here._

_Mickey Milkovich was here too._

_Fucking brothers._

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic comes from the song, "Brother" by Matt Corby (had this on repeat while writing it). I got this idea to write a fic centered around Iggy Milkovich, and dedicated it to lonelygallavich-addict, a fellow fandom writer and awesome person who happens to love Iggy! Seriously check out their writing, especially "Broken Records" if you haven't yet...juicy stuff! I always think about how Iggy would react when finding out his brother is gay, so I took that idea and ran with it. This is set sometime after 4x11 (and I guess before 4x12).
> 
> No one writes about Iggy - so dammit I did. I hope you all enjoyed, and as always, thanks for reading. :)


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